bierkergaard

On New Year's Day Lina and I on the way back from Philly stopped by IKEA to buy bookshelves. We were pleased when the four 8 ft boxes fit into my Honda Civic. It was like a magic trick. With Lina driving, I crawled into the back of the car. My abs constricted and cramped severely causing great pain; I moved my right arm and elbow on top of the boxes to try to a pull myself out of the involuntary fetal position. "CRACK" went the glass in the picture frame (that was on top of the boxes). So, we (me feeling like quite the bad boy) went back into IKEA to buy another frame. The store rep said that they probably would replace it for free and encouraged us to go to the return counter. Both he and the clerk were somewhat astonished when we said that we were not going to do that--I just needed to throw the cracked frame out and that we'd purchase another. It felt good for me to confess my guilt. Reminds me of what the Tax Collecter said in Luke (in Jesus's story about ...

My wife and I just returned from California and Las Vegas. We were visiting her parents and family who live in the Los Angeles region. First Vegas...Vegas reminds me of a girl with low self-worth who attracts the attention from the boys by being easy, attention that she would not otherwise get. They use her, she uses them. Maybe the founders and growers of the town felt they had to go seemier and seedier than the rest of the country to put Las Vegas on the map. We saw the show "O" which was a remarkable spectacle of acrobatics, athletics, and agility, but was oddly absent in terms of story and even bizarre. There were dudes dressed like old-time members of Parliament with red coats and powdered white wigs, water nymphs, a guy on fire reading the paper, muscleman, fire jugglers, a foursome of contortionist, and an unfunny clown--a real theatre of the absurd. So, I found the show a lot like Vegas itself...flashy but empty, and frustrating and profoundly unsatisfying. After Vega...

Today I was doing a bit of a review on the Gospels' stories rendition on the birth of Jesus. There are 3 major towns in Israel mentioned in the Gospels concerning Jesus's first two years of life: Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Nazareth. Three radically different towns in the social strata. A strange thought came into my head afterwards when driving to school, "What store would Nazareth had if our retails chains existed back then?" I thought of the following pairings: Nazareth: K-Mart, Bethlehem: Target, and Jerusalem: Neiman-Marcus. I imagine Jesus and the Disciples buying sandals, robes, and personal hygiene products at K-Mart with the teeming masses and screaming children and turning over some display stands at Neiman Marcus. K-Mart, the Charlie Brown of the retail food chain. The least of these. WWJS - Where Would Jesus Shop? I think K-Mart...the least of these.

I have a laser printer on my desk--an HP 1100. Its printer cartridge is pretty expensive. In years past, once the telltale sign of the cartridge running low would appear, a faded stripe of text down the page, I would toss the cartridge and put in another. I have a low tolerance for things not working well. Like pens; the first sign that it doesn't write well, it is in the trash. A few years ago at work we were running low on cartridges at school with the printer in the office and the computer tech person told me to take out the cartridge and shake it for about a minute and then put it back in the printer. Well, I learned that day that cartridges have a lot more life in them than the first time they start to run low. I never realized that shaking redistributes the remaining ink dust in the printer. I thought that it was like a lightbulb--once it was bad, chuck it. The cartridge that I have in my home printer started to show that it was running low about a month ago. So, I shook it...

Today I cleaned out my bill box. It has been piling up like leaves in Autumn for months. In the pile of stuff, I saw Social Security statement and noticed that my date of birth is listed as October 11, 1973 (my D.O.B. is 10/11/1963) which would make me younger than my wife. That would mean that I started paying into Social Security in 1980 when I was seven years old. The way Social Security is looking, that ten years could make the difference between getting benefits and not getting benefits. How is it the government prosecutes all Ponzi schemes but its own? Guess I have to battle Leviathan on this one to get D.O.B. corrected. Ah, government bureacracy--you'd think the computer would catch that one. I had a dispute with Penn-Dot last year when they sent me notification that they were going to suspend my license plate for a car that I no longer owned! After I burned the old bills to ash, I closed the flu to the chimney. There was still one ember burning but I figured that it was no ...

As you can tell, I have a passion for Rocky. Being from the Philly area is a part of it. New York is glamorous, DC is powerful. Philly is, well Philly. Almost but not quite. The Rocky story is the tale of a thumb-breaking tomatoe who gets a shot and makes it stick. There are other characters that are underdogs that I dig. Here's the short list: 1) Charlie Brown - I am not sure what explains the remarkable success of Peanuts. I think all of us feel like Charlie Brown. "Why is everybody always picking on me?" Peanuts put to rest the lie of childhood innocence. 2) Underdog - A humble shoe shiner who takes a pill and turns into a superdog to save Polly. What was in that pill anyway...doggie roids? 3) Spud Webb - Winning the NBA dunk contest at 5'7"

I like to run. However, recently, when out in Minnesota visiting family for Thanksgiving, I decided to not exercise much and conducted an experiment as if I was the star in my own reality show called "The Biggest Gainer." I came back from the trip 8 pounds heavier. On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, I was starting to loathe myself more than usual (typically, I just have a mild self-malaise). A combination of stuffing myself with Cheetos and other crap plus laying around like a slug and watching tv motivated me to run like Forrest Gump when he grew that big old beard and hit the road. Running, not more rest, brought renewal.